Still Catching a Wave

We also learned that Zuckerman's parents fled Nazi Germany in 1938, and her father, Frederick Kohner, was a screenwriter who came out to Hollywood to write B-movies. They lived in landlocked Brentwood, not Malibu.

Fascinated by his daughter's stories of the surf subculture, Kohner cribbed from her diaries, eavesdropped on her phone conversations and hung around the beach shacks to create the slim pop-culture bestseller "Gidget," which was the nickname given to her for "girl midget."

"People, I don't why, but they get a kick out of learning that Gidget was Jewish. People say, 'Wow, I didn't know that Jewish people surfed.' That's funny, isn't it?" Zuckerman said. (To be fair, in the book, Gidget is WASP-ified into a character called Frances Elizabeth Lawrence.)

The original movie starring Dee was followed by "Gidget Goes Hawaiian" (Deborah Walley), "Gidget Goes to Rome" (Cindy Carol), the television series starring Sally Field and camp classic TV movies like "Gidget Grows Up," starring Karen Valentine wooed by an Arab sheik, and "Gidget Gets Married," in which surf-hubby Moondoggie hangs up his board shorts for a corporate gig.

Before "Endless Summer" was screened Thursday, Brown, 69, signed autographs for weekend surfers more familiar now with BenGay than Coppertone. He explained how surprised he was to produce a cult classic. He was just avoiding land-based employment.

"There was no business culture around surfing back then," he said. The board sports today -- surf and skate -- form a $5 billion industry, and Brown is a millionaire. "We did stuff to make a living so we could surf. Somebody made surfboards. Somebody started a magazine. I made these home movies."

His surf movies didn't play in regular movie theaters but in school and civic auditoriums around California on "the surf circuit." They had no sound, so Brown would often narrate them and play recorded surf music (in "Endless Summer," the Sandals play their guitar riffs).

Though "Endless Summer" gives the impression that August and Hynson decided to tour the world looking for waves, the idea was actually Brown's. They initially were going only to South Africa. "But we found out the airline tickets were cheaper if we went around the world," Brown said.

Why did he pick August and Hynson? "They were available," Brown said.

No, really, why? "Really," Brown said.

August and Hynson were out of earshot, surrounded by their own fan pods, middle-aged guys wanting to remember the glory days and recall where and when they originally saw the movie. A few confessed they saw the film over and over when they were young. They talked about weak knees, their surfing grandkids and, curiously, golf, which we learned a number of aging surfers have drifted toward.

One of the great conceits of the film is the introduction of August and Hynson, shown arriving at various West African airports, wearing dark suits, wraparound shades and carrying boards under their arms. August later said that "Endless Summer" did so well because of the acting abilities of the two surfers, and the joke is that neither speaks a single line in the movie -- the whole thing is narrated by Brown. The two young men, though, are easy to look at: impossibly lean and healthy and tan in a pre-leather way. What they do in the film is either lounge around in their white trunks or surf.